Understanding the Security Environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran based on a Systemic Approach

Understanding the "security environment" is one of the main pillars of countries' security strategy. Unless a country's "security environment" is defined, any security planing will be useless. The "security environment" is usually assessed in terms of threats to that environment, but Shiping Tang in his famous article entitled "systemic Theory of the Security Environment ", offers a new approach to defining the 'security environment'. According to it, the "security environment" is considered as a "system" that is formed by several factors. In this study, while introducing the main parts of Tang’s theory, it examines five indicators "permeability of geographical barriers", "power of State", "behave with self-restraint", "robust constraint behalf international structure (structural constraints)" and "dominance of defense" that he presents about the good security environment of a country, is discussed and while examining the above five indicators, it is concluded that the "security environment" of the Islamic Republic of Iran is good (or desirable) and the likelihood of war is low. The purpose of this study is to apply a system-oriented theory in order to understand the security environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to manage the threats posed by that environment by understanding the "security environment". The necessity of research also stems from the use of a system-oriented approach that has received less attention, because the theoretical effort of researchers has been focused on using the traditional threat-identifying approach in order to understand the security environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Keywords:

Systemic Theory of Security Environment , geographical barriers , Self-restraint , international structure , Defense , aggression